Movies Seen in 2012

Hey, a film where Andy Serkis is allowed to show his real face! It's mostly a quite funny film (I didn't like the part about the production of MacBeth) with a lot of very good actors - I especially wish they had shown more of Tim Curry's character.

And the card they showed at the beginning ("This is a true story - except for the parts that are not") should be mandatory for all "based on a true story" films.

Having recently watched the five-hour HBO miniseries, I decided to re-watch this very fine old film noir. This time, I was impressed by the way they condensed the same story down to a fast-paced 111 minutes: not a moment or a line of dialogue was wasted. The tragic tale of a mother's obsessive, self-destructive love for her undeserving fille fatale daughter was just as poignant, and a great deal of suspense was created by framing the principal narrative with a murder mystery. Joan Crawford won a well-deserved best Actress Oscar for playing the title role.

This Direct to DVD film starring James Brolin and Ian Somerhalder is essentially Waterworld meets Indiana Jones with a dose of DaVinci Code.
The world has succumbed to global warming leaving many treasures now hundreds of feet below the water in the once glorious cities of the past. Our crew, led by Brolin's, father figure Jake Kubiak hunts for treasure with his two sons. Unbeknownst to his sons Jake has a deal with the "New Vatican" to find an ancient scepter that allegedly has the power to reverse the floodwaters of the world. I give them points for putting together an above average story but the action sequences using the 'slo mo' technique didn't work. The choreography on the fight scenes was bad. The eye candy was nice at least.

Rating scale: 1, don't bother; 2, see if you get the chance; 3, definitely see

1. The Joneses: 2
Entertaining, and fun at first, as an interesting take on a family drama. Then turns darker, and the ending didn't do much for me.

2. 13 Assassins: 3
Excellent. Like a modern 7 Samurai.

3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: 2
Excellent acting, but like much of LeCarre's stuff, I found the reveal to be more like "oh, that guy (shrug)" than "OH, that guy!" Benedict Cumberbatch was awesome, and Gary Oldman was too, as ususal.

4. Brick: 3
Interesting noir set at a SoCal high school. Very well done on a shoestring budget.

5. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil: 3
Hilarious, probably my favorite of this year. Tucker's and Dale's descriptions of the deaths of the two college students just destroyed me with laughter.

6. The Italian Job (1969): 1
Though Michael Caine is great, I just couldn't get past the very 60s vibe of the movie. Reminds me exactly of the equally painful cinematography/music/approach of Ocean's 12.

7. The Escapist: 2
Interesting, well acted, but just not great.

8. The Fighter: 2
A good biopic/fight movie, but "Warrior" was better and similar.

9. The Good, The Bad, The Weird: 2
A Chinese take on "The Good the Bad and the Ugly". Fun with decent action pieces. The film would have been great except the final chase was not as well done as the rest, and I didn't feel there was any real tension/animosity between "The Good" and "The Weird" to make the Mexican standoff at the end any good at all.

10. Hot Tub Time Machine: 2
Some fun; time travel can be entertaining, but overall nothing special here.

11. Morning Glory: 3
Funny, with good performances from the whole cast (Harrison Ford actually impresses for once in a long while), and McAdams is very charismatic (and beautiful).

12. Bronson: 1
Interesting. Tom Hardy is great, but the film just didn't get me like I expected based on all the praise I have seen.

14. Shutter Island: 2
Like Bronson, I went in expecting a lot based on comments of others. I don't know if the twist is supposed to be figured out as you are watching it, but I figured out where the movie was going and instead of feeling the tension/dramatic irony of knowing more than the character I was really just frustrated watching him catch up. And what is with Mark Ruffalo's character's non-action at the end???

15. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans: 2
A pretty good performance from Nicolas cage. Overall only a decent movie.

16. Exam: 2
Very well done with a good premise and setup. Like many such "characters vs. each other" movies, some actions are over-the-top unrealistic, and the logic contortions that are needed to explain the story at the end are almost unsupportable.

17. Haywire: 2
A decent action movie. Gina is hot and very capable of carrying the action. The acting mostly came from a good supporting cast. All done in a very Soderberg style. (Come to think of it, very similar to Ocean's 12, but with better visual and music choices.)

18. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol: 2
Dissapointing, again compared to what I had heard about it. The action is good. The story around Kurt Hendricks makes no sense (does Ethan know him or not?), and Jeremy Renner's character's story/backstory makes little sense and is paper thin. I think a lot of editing (and maybe some last minute major script rewrites) gutted a lot of this movie.

Revisited this 2003 gem, which I saw in theatres when it came out, but haven't since (sadly, Peter Weir has only made one other movie since then, which I still haven't seen, but I plan to).

Weir's depiction of life at sea in the golden age of sail is magnificent, and really the movie's main drawing point; it's more a travelogue of a sea voyage then it is a thriller or an adventure movie. When The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo came out earlier this year, I know David Fincher talked about creating a franchise for adults; Weir was trying to do that here, but sadly it didn't fly, though we're left with one great movie (between this and Pirates of the Caribbean, 2003 was a great year for naval action). Minor nit I guess is that the otherwise naturalistic tone of the movie veers into somewhat stilted ideological clashes between Aubrey and Maturnin once or twice (and Maturnin's sulking about Aubrey calling off their visit to the Galapagos the first time makes him look like an utter ninny, whereas I think the movie wants us to feel he's been done wrong).

Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany are both great as the leads, and the host of actors playing the rest of the cast fit together well, even if I couldn't say I easily remembered their names. Lord Blakeney is the standout of the rest of the crew. Also, watching this movie made me wonder what Billy Boyd has been up to since this movie and Lord of the Rings. The answer, per the IMDB: not a lot.

6. "Super 8" (2011) Directed By J.J. Abrams (Starring Kyle Chandler, Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning) (A) I saw this film last summer and didn't really have a chance to do a review and will do a quick one here. This film will be on my top ten films of 2011 list. Just a superb movie that manages to capture I think what a Steven Speilberg fairy tale 70's/80's film is. It also took me back to my child hood. Watching films with my mom and brother as a kid. We didn't go to a lot of films but I have fond memories of the ones we did go see, and I really got emotional during this film a few times as it reminded me of that. This film is a total homage to Speilberg's classic films. The acting from the kids is spectacular and compelling at times. The almost kind of nostalgic setting of the late 70s. It reminds me of a really great family film mixed with an almost serial type of feel. Aghh. I'm rambling. This is why I haven't done a review of this film because there are all kinds of different emotions that this movie conjures up in me. Just a wonderful film. This is probably my second favourite film of Abrams, the first being "Star Trek" of course. I really enjoyed every aspect of this movie.

16. My Sister's Keeper: (✩✩✩✩½) Starring Cameron Diaz. This one is about a family who has to cope with one of their children who's dying of cancer and another one who wants medical emancipation at the age of 11 because she doesn't want to be a guinea pig anymore. The lawyer she seeks out is played by Alec Baldwin. It's a good movie that bounces around to different points in their lives. I like that it's not sappy. The characters have ups, downs and mundane moments in between, like people in real life would.

17. Valkyrie: (✩✩✩½) Tom Cruise as Tom Cruise with an eye patch, out to kill Hitler. Good engaging movie with Tom Cruise cruisin' as only Tom could.

18. The Anderson Tapes: (✩✩✩) 1971 movie starring Sean Connery. He plays Anderson, a man who gets out of prison and decides to assemble a team in order to rob a high class apartment complex in New York. The movie's title comes from the fact that everything Anderson does, from initial planning to the actual heist is being recorded and observed by various agencies. This movie is supposed to be a commentary on surveilance. I thought it was alright. The movie also features a young Christopher Walken, who I didn't recognize at first.

19. Jack Goes Boating: (✩✩✩½) Directed by and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman plays Jack, a shy guy who's set up on a date and prepares by taking cooking classes so he can cook the meal, and swimming lessons in preparation for a boating trip come summer. On the side are Jack's two friends, a couple who are having problems of their own just as his relationship is budding. I found it to be an average but enjoyable movie.

20. Margin Call: (✩✩✩½) In 2008, on the eve of the financial crisis, traders and higher-ups at a firm in New York discover that their company is about to collapse. They take measures to mitigate the disaster any way they can even if it means dumping their problems onto unsuspecting investors. This one features an all-star cast that includes Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Demi Moore, Zachary Quinto, Jerrey Irons, Mary McDonnell, Simon Baker and Stanley Tucci. The movie was engaging, but not too intense.

21. Away We Go: (✩✩✩½) A couple with a baby on the way travel to various cities trying to decide where to settle down. Their various stops invlove meeting with old friends and family who are an interesting mix of people. Good movie.

22. Superman & Batman: Apocalypse: (✩✩✩✩) Another take on Kara Zor-El's arrival on Earth and journey to become Supergirl. Although this is titled "Superman & Batman", it features Wonder Woman to round out the big three. Like a lot of animated movies, this one is well done. Two issues though... 1) Kara adapted to life as a young American girl a little too easily with her shopping and the eating of a hotdog, and 2) They had the Kent farm attacked before we found out what happened to Martha and Jonathan and I found that distracting.

23. Pandorum: (✩✩½) Alien-like movie about a crew who wakes up from suspended animation and has to fight off creatures in a dark and dingy ship. The movie is dull, but it really picks up after about an hour and has a pretty good ending. There were some good ideas here but they were poorly exectuted.

At the Theatre: 0
On DVD/Blu-Ray: 6
On TV: 15
On Demand: 2
Off the Internet: 0

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie: I know fans have complained that This Island Earth isn't bad enough to be featured here, but from what I've seen (only in the context of this film) it's pretty awful. The riffs here are pretty good (although, like always, some miss) and the Satellite of Love segments are some of the best the show's ever done.

24. Paper Man: (✩✩✩✩½) - DVD - Richard Dunn (Jeff Daniels), an awkward and emotionally stunted man with an imaginary friend named Captain Excellent (Ryan Reynolds), is taken by his wife (Lisa Kudrow) to a rented house on Long Island and left there so he can have some space to write his book. Unable to write anything, he makes friends with a troubled teenage girl named Abby (Emma Stone) and the two of them hit it off and become friends after he hires her as a babysitter eventhough there's no baby. Drama ensues and Richard's wife comes to visit on weekends not knowing that he has a new friend. Critics have been pretty hard on this movie, but I found it to be very well written. Richard has to deal with writer's block, his own stunted growth at middle age, a staid marriage and being friends with a cute girl, and it's all done without being in your face with heavy drama. It's quirky and light-hearted with an idie vibe, and it's one of the best movies I've seen in a while. I would have given it al full five stars, but Reynolds' Captain Excellent comes off as a bit too extraneous in a lot of places eventhough he's fun to watch.

Check out the trailer...

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlEyb9SdDDE[/yt]

25. In Like Flint: (✩✩½) - TV - This 1967 movie is the sequel to Our Man Flint, a parody of James Bond. James Coburn returns as Flint, a wealthy genius adventurer spy who's brrought in to find the President after he's been kidnapped by an organization of women bent on creating a matriarchal society. I really liked Our Man Flint, but found this one lacking. Flint didn't charm me and even the 60s flair, which I like, felt empty. Batman this wasn't.

I just got back from seeing it and man did my expectations exceed throughout the movie. Before the movie, I was thinking how I hope a silent film does not end up winning best picture because, well, it's a silent film and the only one that's come in in the last, what, 20+ years? Then as I was watching it, I was greatly enjoying it and now I hope it does. This is a movie experience, with a great cast and a great story. There were some very chilling scenes and the music was masterful. I actually found it refreshing to see a movie like this in comparison with all those big blockbuster action movies and 3D gimmicks that are now being used.

Absolutely brilliant! I loved this film and I'm tempted to watch it again in the cinema (something I don't usually do). Nice songs, cameos by celebrities and Muppets alike and a lot of nostalgia (maybe too much if you're not a fan of the "Muppet Show", but since I am, I loved all of them).

Alexander Payne returns after a seven-year absence; I saw Sideways when it came out and recently acquainted myself with his other films apart from Citizen Ruth. This feels much in the mold of About Schmidt (maybe if Warren's wife had died twenty or thirty years earlier things would have turned out a bit like this). Clooney is great in the lead role, and enormous praise is deserved for Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller, the actresses who play his daughters; both feel entirely natural. The story feels very real; there's a lot of voiceover in the first ten minutes that feels a little out of place (partly because they don't use it all the way through; that's the kind of thing where you're either all in or out, in my opinion). Beautifully shot.

Twixt: Francis Ford Coppola's latest effort (which he wrote and directed) is in some respects the best film he's made in the past twenty years, and in other respects the worst film he's made in that same period. Visually, it is at times very interesting (the film makes great use of isolated objects of a particular color in otherwise black and white sequences), but at other times (often, in the most basic of scenes, such as dialogue between two characters) it is framed and edited in a way that is positively amateurish. I found this a little bewildering, since Coppola has had such a wonderful eye in the past, and his cinematographer on the film previously photographed the beautiful (if bewildering) Youth Without Youth.

Val Kilmer, playing an alcoholic, bottom-shelf horror writer, certainly looks the part. Also, the scenes where he fights with his wife who hates him (played by Kilmer's real life ex-wife) mustn't have been hard to play. Bruce Dern really chews the scenery (in a good way), too.

When the movie recognizes that it's a bit silly, it works. When it recognizes that it's essentially a home movie for Coppola, mainly one that deals with the death of his son -- thinly disguised in the movie -- it works (when Kilmer's character, an obvious surrogate for Coppola, comes to terms with the event, it strikes a chord). When it tries to be scary, or artful, it doesn't work -- at all. This is not 1970s Francis Ford Coppola; this is not even 2000s Francis Ford Coppola. Don't expect it to be either of those things or the movie will likely be unwatchable.

Also, when it decides to be in 3D for about seven minutes (half of those the end credits), I was just confused. The only explanation I can come up with is that Coppola ran out of money to convert the entire film into 3D.

A cute film that starts slow and ends strong. I like how Norah is trying to not embrace her fathers influence and make something of herself on her own. This spins off into her being self-conscious that she isn't as traditionally hot as Tris. Although I find it interesting the narrative doesn't say similar things about Nick. A quick short movie with some heart, once you get out of the first act.

Burn After Reading: Following their Oscar win for Best Picture, the Coen brothers made this film, which received mixed reviews (though leaning positive), but it's only grown in my esteem every time I've seen it. It's just funny as hell. I'm pretty sure John Malkovich was chosen to play Osborne Cox based solely on his ability to mispronounce the word "memoir" and repeatedly yell variations of "fuck." (That's not a slight against the actor; he's hilarious). So are Clooney, McDormand, and Pitt (whose final scene is still as shocking as it is funny) are all great, too. I'm also a big fan of Carter Burwell's super-serious score, which only makes the morons who take everything they do so seriously in the movie even funnier.